


All There Is

by AthenasAspis (agentandromeda)



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Found Family, Major Character Undeath, Paranormal, The Raven Cycle AU, handsome jack will be here at some point and it will be hilarious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-07 23:56:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15918828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentandromeda/pseuds/AthenasAspis
Summary: All her life, Sasha Mendez has been told when she kisses her true love, he'll die.Living in a family of psychics has taught her to not take such predictions lightly.When she meets the boy she's destined to kill, an oblivious nerd named Rhys from the local prep school, she's swept up into his world of magic and his quest for a dead king, along with his eclectic group of friends. But time is running short for all of them. And magic won't be kind.





	All There Is

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a dumb idea that I ended up writing 2k for in like an hour. Weird.  
> Warning: I probably won't carry this fic to its full potential  
> This one goes out to Rhysha God thirty2flavors

Sasha did not envy Fiona, nor did Fiona envy Sasha.

Sasha was too interested in making her own future to worry about how her sister—her whole family—dabbled in the destinies of others. Nor did she desire the ability to see ghosts everywhere: ghosts of the past, ghosts of the future, traces of what people would do.

Fiona didn’t want the power to augment the psychic abilities of others; it was better to be the one augmented, to see the wisps surrounding every person turn into solid possibilities as long as Sasha was by her side. 

But Sasha did envy Fiona one thing: Fiona could fall in love.

Because the entire family of psychics living at 300 Fox Way had predicted the same thing: if Sasha were to kiss her true love, he would die. 

Others would have scoffed at such a specific yet fairytale prediction. But not Sasha. She had seen firsthand the predictive powers of everyone who had delivered this dire prophecy. Indeed, they turned a profit on them. 

So she spent many hours of her childhood wildly speculating how this prophecy would be fulfilled. Maybe she carried a horribly deadly and untreatable disease transmitted by kissing. Maybe it would be a jealous affair, an old flame emerging from the bushes to kill her true love at the moment of the kiss. Maybe it would be a coincidence, and her love would exit, pursued by bear. 

By sixteen, Sasha had decided she would never fall in love. 

But all that changed when her mother’s half sister Aurelia came to their town of Hollow Point. 

Sasha wasn’t sure why Aurelia was coming. Aurelia’s was not the world of backroom readings and hand painted signs. Aurelia had a show on at noon and many books on the supernatural. Her gift dealt in precision and numbers—the kind of thing that made for good theatrics but didn’t really get to the bottom of things. But, like the women of Fox Way, her predictions were always correct. 

Sasha was the one who opened the door for Aurelia when she finally arrived, dragging an expensive-looking suitcase. She was a haughty-looking woman whose face looked impossibly old in the shadows of the mountains, but really couldn’t have been older than Sasha’s mother, which wasn’t old at all. She was as dark as her half-sister was fair, with a white streak running through her black hair. Sasha saw a hint of herself in the lines of her cheekbones. Sasha saw none of herself in the impossible wave of cold that radiated off the woman. Before Sasha could even say anything, Aurelia interjected,

“You’re Janey’s daughter.”

Sasha nodded, and Aurelia continued,

“This is the year you’ll fall in love.”

=========

Fiona envied Sasha one thing, and that was the chance to go to the church on St. Mark’s Eve.

“I don’t see why you get to go and I can’t,” she had complained from her top bunk.

“I never even see anything,” Sasha reminded her. “I’m just there as a conduit.”

And indeed Sasha almost envied Fiona the chance to stay home. At least it wasn’t raining this year. But the stone was still cold and the old church was still rotting. Usually, she came with her mother, but this year she didn’t even have that. Instead, she sat on the stone wall alongside Aurelia, holding a pencil and pad of paper. 

This was the corpse road, the path that the dead—or soon to be dead—walked every year on the 24th of April. The souls of the people that were to die in the next year appeared on this road at midnight—at least theoretically. The dead kept poor time, so here they were, at five minutes to eleven. 

Aurelia said nothing as she sat, rigid and cold, on the stone wall. Until she started slightly, glancing over her shoulder.

“They’re here,” she said, and Sasha readied her pencil.

Aurelia leaned in as each spirit passed, asking for a name, and nodding as she repeated it for Sasha to write down. This was their routine every St. Mark’s Eve, except usually it was Janey beside her. If one of the future dead were clients, Janey would inform them. Allow them to get their affairs in order. 

Sasha had sixteen years of not being privy to the supernatural under her belt, so it didn’t bother her how Aurelia could interact with the spirit world with ease. Sasha didn’t want to see ghosts.

And then she saw one.

“What’s your name?” Aurelia called out to him. He didn’t respond.

“I can see him,” Sasha whispered.

Aurelia looked shocked. Apparently, he was a spirit. Sasha wasn’t supposed to be able to see the spirits.

“Talk to him,” Aurelia hissed. “He’s not responding to me.”

As if in a trance, Sasha walked over to the lone figure. She felt a chill, presumably from all the ghosts passing through her, taking her energy for one last grateful manifestation. She was like a battery to spirits, she had been told.

As she approached, she recognized Hyperion yellow as the color of his tattered sweater. This was unusual. The students of Hyperion Academy were prim and proper, pressed and professional. They were the reason Sasha had come up with her two rules. One, stay away from boys, because they were trouble. And two, stay away from Hyperion boys, because they were bastards.

But this one was too helpless to hate. Putting aside the fact that he’d be dead within the year. His clothes were torn. His hair was limp and bedraggled, hanging in faded red-brown curls over his anguished face. He turned towards her, and she saw chiseled features marred by bruising over his left eye. In life, perhaps he was handsome. But whatever veil separated them blurred and drained his features. All that was left was a suggestion. A Hyperion boy that she could, for some reason, see. 

He was shuffling forward, towards the door of the old church, and Sasha knew she had to stop him if she was going to get his name.  
“Who are you?” she demanded, and he flinched imperceptibly. So not only could she see him, he could hear her. She stepped forward.

“Please,” she said, softly this time. Her fingers brushed the edge of his tattered yellow sweater, and a chill washed over her. Just him using his energy to manifest, she reminded herself. But it felt like dread.

“Will you tell me your name?”

He faced her, and his eyes were disconcertingly empty. Yet they stared right at her.

“Rhys,” he said. She could barely hear him, but not because he was whispering; it was like he was speaking from another room, someplace just beyond her reach. 

“Is that all?” she asked.

“That’s all there is,” he replied in that same otherworldly tone. The chill that ran through her body was not spiritual. It was a completely normal chill. The kind of chill that comes from speaking to a boy doomed to die.

He gave a grunt and fell soundlessly to his knees, his hands splayed out against the earth. He was fading now. His time—all of the ghosts’s time—was running short. 

“Aurelia!” Sasha called. Somehow, her half-aunt was by her side, clearly too intrigued to stay away. “Aurelia, he’s dying!”

“Not yet,” she responded. Her gaze was almost indifferent.

Rhys gave a last little cry, and then he was gone, gone to wherever time ghosts go to die for the last—first—time. 

“Wh—why could I see him?” Sasha asked. 

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on the ley line,” Aurelia told her. “Either he is your true love, or you are the one who kills him.”

=========

“It’s me,” said Rhys. 

The hood of the offensively yellow Camaro affectionately dubbed the Loader was propped up, more as a call for help than as an actual attempt at fixing the problem. The actual attempt that Rhys was currently engaged in was calling his friend Yvette to come pick him up. He would have quite liked to lean moodily against the hood as he did so, but he was wearing a spotless yellow uniform and didn’t want to risk contact with the grease that undoubtably lurked in every crevice of the ancient car. 

“You missed Leadership Practices,” Yvette said. “I thought you were dead in a ditch.”

Rhys glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven, but last night’s unseasonal chill still lingered in the air. Or perhaps that was the thrill of discovery. 

“You know what,” he decided, “it’s almost lunch break. Just pick me up. I’m right by the I-93 exit. Bring burgers. And Vaughn,” he added. Vaughn, who could add together car parts as if they were the numbers that he manipulated so effortlessly, would surely know what to do. 

“You’re paying me back for the burgers,” Yvette told him before hanging up.

Rhys stripped off his sweater and tossed it into the backseat of the Loader, where it joined a pile of detritus appropriate to such a car. He immediately had to move the sweater aside, as it had landed atop the pile of maps, notes, and electronic equipment he had accumulated during his time in Hollow Point. After a bit of rummaging, he found the digital recorder he had sat with for the entirety of the previous night, perched gingerly a bit of a ways from the ancient church. 

Most people didn’t celebrate St. Mark’s Eve. But Rhys believed in its power. And he needed all the leads he could get for his quest. 

And finally, he had something. He wasn’t quite sure what that something was, or what that something meant. But it was impossible. And that meant he was on the right track.

His thoughts were interrupted by Yvette’s BMW sending up a small spray of gravel as it pulled up beside him. The beat of the song that went something-something-Mainframe thudded through the asphalt as Yvette stepped out of the driver's side. And from the other side came Vaughn, member three of their Hyperion foursome. 

Vaughn gave him a look, and that look asked if he had found anything. And Rhys gave him a victorious smirk and tilt of the head. That meant he had. 

“Hugo wants to meet us at Purple Dog,” Yvette announced as Vaughn moved to inspect the Loader. “With Ashley. His newest arm candy.”

Rhys folded his arms. Yvette’s brother was a smarmy ass, and impossible to deal with, but it was Rhys’s unspoken job to keep the siblings from fistfighting. Not an easy task. Rhys was in a good mood, though, and not even meeting Hugo could dampen his excitement. Especially when he remembered that, Hugo or no, that evening the four of them would all be clustered around a table, squeezed into the booth and feasting. Going over the evidence. 

“Ask me if I found anything,” Rhys told Yvette. She sighed.

“Did you find anything?”

Rhys grinned and held up the recorder. 

“Vaughn, get over here.” Vaughn ditched his mechanical work and came over. 

“So I stayed up by the old church last night,” Rhys recounted dramatically, “and I didn’t hear anything the whole night. But these recorders pick up things you can’t hear. Paranormal 101. I was listening to the recording on my way to school this morning. Silence. Until…” he pressed play. 

Silence. And then, clear as day, words. 

“Will you tell me your name?” a hushed female voice asked.

Rhys said, “Rhys.” But it wasn’t the Rhys standing by the sun-baked road. It was a faraway Rhys. A lost Rhys. 

“Is that all?” the girl asked.

“That’s all there is,” Rhys said.

“That wasn’t me,” the Rhys not on the recording burst out enthusiastically. “I was totally silent.” 

Yvette raised an eyebrow and pretended to not be impressed. Her skepticism was on display in every line of her face. She had taken quite a bit of care to cultivate such a face. But her faith was never in doubt; she followed Rhys in his quest without question. 

“What does it mean, bro?” Vaughn asked.

“It means,” Rhys announced, “we move forward.”

He couldn’t contain his excitement. He had been stagnating in between clues for months now. But with this, things were finally happening. It felt like something was starting. Something beyond his control.

With a few clever turns of a wrench that Rhys could never hope to understand, Vaughn had the Loader working again. It sputtered to life as if saying thank you. Rhys supposed that if his car were to speak to anyone, it would be Vaughn. 

Rhys got in his car, and Vaughn got into Yvette’s. Before driving away, they both had something for him. Yvette handed him a grease stained fast food bag. Half the fries were missing. 

Vaughn handed him a piece of paper with a phone number written on it in his impossibly neat handwriting. 

“It’s for a psychic’s practice,” Vaughn told him. Rhys raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in psychics; skepticism would be hypocritical. He just wasn’t sure if they were the real deal. Or how much they could tell him.

“This was the plan if you didn’t find anything,” Vaughn continued. 

“And now?”

Vaughn shrugged.

“You’ve got something to ask them about.” He looked up at Rhys, a necessity thanks to Rhys’s middle school growth spurt. “We need to know who you were talking to.”


End file.
